South Korea Rescues Crew and Ship From Pirates

South Korean naval special forces guarded Somali pirates after detaining them on the South Korean cargo ship Samho Jewelry in the Arabian Sea on Friday.Credit
South Korean Navy, via Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean special forces staged a daring early morning rescue on a hijacked freighter hundreds of miles off the coast of Somalia on Friday, killing eight pirates and rescuing all 21 hostages, the South Korean military said.

President Lee Myung-bak, who was sharply criticized last year over what was deemed a weak response to the sinking of a warship and the North Korean shelling of a South Korean island, reaffirmed his country’s tough stance against pirates and appeared pleased with the operation in a televised statement.

“We will not tolerate any behavior that threatens the lives and safety of our people in the future,” Mr. Lee said.

Rescue operations on hijacked ships are rare, with countries often deciding against such attempts over concerns for the safety of the crew. Most shipping companies, in turn, opt to pay the expensive ransoms demanded by Somali pirates to release hijacked ships rather than engage in confrontations.

The rescue began at 5 a.m. Friday, when a special forces team from a South Korean destroyer piled into a small vessel and approached the hijacked ship as the destroyer provided cover, according to the military. The commandos then confronted the pirates, who were armed with AK-47s, heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, in a battle that lasted five hours.

Three South Korean soldiers were wounded, the military said, and the hijacked ship’s captain, a South Korean, was shot in the abdomen, but his injuries were said not to be life-threatening. The entire crew was then brought to safety.

The 11,500-ton freighter, the Samho Jewelry, was traveling to Sri Lanka from the United Arab Emirates last Saturday when it was seized by the pirates about 800 miles off the coast of northeast Somalia.

The South Korean government dispatched a naval destroyer on antipiracy patrol to track the ship. South Korea, like other nations, patrols the waters off Somalia since the increase in pirate attacks in recent years.

While the pirates held the 21-person crew — including 8 South Koreans, 2 Indonesians and 11 citizens of Myanmar — they simultaneously began using the large cargo ship as a base to try further attacks on nearby ships.

The standoff between the destroyer and the pirates lasted several days, with the South Korean military sending messages ordering the pirates to surrender.

A South Korean military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said while the operation to free the hostages was not free of risk, the military had confidence it would succeed because “the pirates were exhausted” after the long standoff.

“The decision to carry out the operation was made to send a message that there will not be any negotiation with the pirates,” the official said.

The Samho Jewelry was the second vessel of South Korea-based Samho Shipping to be hijacked in the past several months. In November, Somali pirates freed the Samho Dream and its 24 crew members after seven months of captivity.

Su-Hyun Lee reported from Seoul, South Korea, and Kevin Drew from Hong Kong. J. David Goodman contributed reporting from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on January 22, 2011, on page A5 of the New York edition with the headline: South Korea Rescues Freighter Crew from Somali Pirates. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe